To Stem The Blood Flow A US Politician Needs To Sacrifice Their Career
Brad Emery – Huffington Post
Australia, 1996, an animal lets loose his psychotic hatred on the historic tourist park of Port Arthur in Tasmania. Thirty five people, including children, were gunned down with military style weapons.
Australia’s newly elected Prime Minister, John Howard, took immediate action. Assault style weapons were banned. Semi-automatic rifles were restricted to those owning land in rural Australia deemed to have a genuine need to manage feral animals. Ownership of handguns was drastically tightened. The government issued an amnesty and gun buyback. Any firearm, legal or illegal could be handed in, no questions asked, with market value paid for the weapon.
Donice Smith (L) is embraced after one of her former teachers was killed in a mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon on Oct. 1, 2015.
Prime Minister Howard risked isolating his national voting base to bring about this change. He risked being a ‘one-term Prime Minister’ — rare in Australian politics.
It worked.
Listen to President Obama’s full statement on the shooting in Oregon:
Forget Oregon’s Gunman. Remember the Hero Who Charged Straight at Him.
Michael Daly – The Daily Beast
No amount of murder seems likely to result in gun control any time soon. So let’s do what we can to stop the lunacy—by reserving the limelight for the vet who rushed Thursday’s shooter….
The one to remember is 30-year-old Chris Mintz, the student and Army vet who was shot at least five times while charging straight at the gunman in an effort to save others.
Mintz did so on the sixth birthday of his son, Tyrik.
“It’s my son’s birthday, it’s my son’s birthday,” he was heard saying as he lay wounded.
When word of Mintz’s heroism reached his kin in his native North Carolina, his cousin Derek Bourgeois was hardly surprised.
“It sounds like something he would do,” Bourgeois said.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown thanks emergency personnel that were on hand during the mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, Oct. 2, 2015. (AP)
The Oregon Shooting: This is What America’s Founding Fathers Wanted?
Peter Weber – The Week
I would like people to be able to hunt and shoot skeet and target-practice with non-military-grade long guns, pass down heirloom weaponry to their children, and probably even keep a handgun for the protection of themselves and their families, if they think it would keep them safe.
Like a majority of Americans, I would also like sensible, reasonable restrictions on gun ownership, including universal background checks on the sale of guns and ammunition. I would like not to worry whenever I hear sirens that there is an active-shooter situation at my children’s schools — parents have enough demons to fight without that tragically plausible fear hovering around their ears….
Adopted in 1791, the Second Amendment says this:
“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
It wasn’t until 2008 that the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote, interpreted that enigmatic, curiously punctuated sentence to mean individual Americans have a constitutional right to bear arms. It doubled down on the “individual right theory” in 2010, in another 5-4 vote.
Far be it for me to argue with the learned constitutional scholars on the Supreme Court — at least the five that overruled 70 years of Supreme Court precedent — but sometimes experts can’t see the forest for the trees.